[26-May-2007] [Trinity Blood] These Hands

[randomtrickpony.livejournal.com]

Title: These Hands
Day/Theme: May 26: blood and love without the rhetoric
Series: Trinity Blood
Character/Pairing: Esther, Ion, Abel
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,915
Spoilers/Warnings: It's a bit fluffy this time, so bring a toothbrush...
Cross-Posted to: randomtrickpony and trinityblood  

(A/N:  Since I don't normally write fluff at all, I hope you enjoy this while it lasts! I have to honestly say that a friend's littlest kid inspired this. It's always interesting to hold a baby...and then realize that one day, not too far in the future, they might change the world.)

It started only with eyes. An infinitely old pair blinking beneath silver lashes, and another set, untroubled, staring out from under golden brows. Both azure-hued, both facing a future, both in pure wonder of the other.

"So what do you think Abel?"

He could feel Esther's warmth as she slid down beside him on the other brocaded cushion, see a hint of her hair as she leaned against his shoulder with a smile. One of her fingers stretched out, touching the infant's fabric-covered toes and he kicked, gurgling in contentment as she tickled him.

"He has Ion's nose," was all he could manage.

She realized that he was holding the child a bit loosely and nudged his side with one elbow.

"Keep his head up! Haven't you ever held a baby before, silly?"

Her teasing was not lost on him, and he managed a small smirk, much to her amusement.

"Of course I have," he growled, playing along, holding the infant a bit closer to his chest.

In truth, he'd held many children over the almost thousand years that accounted for what he called his life. And of these he remembered quite distinctly the first time he'd held Seth, her little hands scrunching into fists, her pale face contorting into various expressions as she'd tried to figure out exactly who he was through still-fuzzy eyes. It had been a moment of revelation, as a child then, holding a child. And it had taken him years to truly understand what that simple act had finally meant, and now here he was again.

"Hard to think he'll one day lead the country," she turned her smile up to him.

He wanted to say, 'if he's lucky', but he held his tongue. That would be both rude and would ruin this moment of intimacy, a moment in only a handful that was so rare he wanted to cocoon himself in it and never uncurl from its warmth.

Instead he said, "yes," and felt his eyes grow glassy.

She wrapped a hand around his left upper arm, the one next to her, lips going small as she considered the tiny glint of liquid that had appeared at the corner of his eye.

"You ok," she finally whispered.

"Yes," he sighed, gazing up at the room as his glasses slid down his long nose. Seeing through only half of the lenses was typical, as they often slipped, and he'd since gotten used to a partially blurred world.

"Do you like it?" she asked, "great grandmother Fortuna picked out the pastels. You know, she really is a wonderful person, I can see why your sister cares about her so much. Ion's still in shock I think, he's-"

Her words trailed off in his mind, though he didn't mean them to. But his eyes took everything in, despite the half-fuzziness of some of it, and he became hopelessly lost in a world of sensation. This was definitely a royal nursery, the walls painted with a scene of playful tigers and baby elephants leading a parade of various other animalia around the whole of the room. The curtains were covered in soft gauzy yellow drapes, which had been pulled back to let in the sunlight through specially-tinted glass so that Ion could share in the daylight with his son. And the crib was a soft blue, as was the carpet. Even the brocade of the couch they'd chosen was the same peaceful blue and yellow, blended and intertwined in soft patterns.

It also smelled like a baby too, scents that proved alien to a nose far more used to the tingling stench of gunpowder and clinging haze of warm blood. Despite himself, he drank the silence in. Innocence was a rare thing, but it made him feel uncomfortable. He shouldn't be disturbing this, he shouldn't have come ba-

A touch and then firm grip on one of his fingers made him look down. The little boy was frowning at him, mimicking his expression in a wonderful parody, face scrunching much as Seth's had done. He hadn't realized he was frowning, and a corner of his mouth twitched. Esther giggled, resting her cheek against his arm, her blue eyes soft.

"He likes you I think," her giggle permeating her voice, "he doesn't want to let you go."

Indeed, he realized, as one of the child's tiny hands slid around his long first finger.  At this he opened his palm experimentally, making the boy's expression drift back to one of slightly startled interest.

"Apparently not," he admitted, and then sighed very softly, though Esther caught it.

He glanced at his hands now, the child letting go as he uncurled the other set of fingers, unexpectedly providing something else to grab onto.

Hands. Yes, his hands, Esther’s hands, the child’s unblemished hands which now wiggled forward to grab at his own. He'd left his gloves back with his coat when he had come in, a butler greeting him and slipping away with everything, giving only Esther a curt nod. Now, yes, thinking of this, he wished he'd kept them.

Esther's hands, one resting on her lap, were small and strange to him, though he had held them before. He imagined them holding the little boy now, helping him up years from now when he tripped and bloodied a knee. It was a simple set of images, the now and the later, ones he'd seen a hundred times with a hundred different faces. The Esther here now was and yet wasn't the Esther he had known...and a part of him knew that his life would always be like this, and the child would always be another's.

His hands, he didn't want to think of them. Larger then Esther's and more lined, but none-the-less just as soft. The gloves kept them that way, except for a little callus between the thumb and first finger, where the butt of a machine which knew only how to kill was wont to rest, despite his best intentions to use the pistol only for peace. Hands which had dripped with another's blood so many times that he did not remember the legion of faces which had once possessed the red ichor, only a few, and even then, only because of the pain they had brought him in death.

Lilith had been one such.

"What are you thinking about Father Abel?" she asked, voice dropping down a bit when she saw the darkness in his eyes.

"Nothing...yes, nothing," he said, glancing sidelong at her with a shy sort of smile, trying to hide the pain.

She reached out, touching the tip of his nose, smiling in that way of hers, sending a delicious wave of warmth all the way to his toes. He closed his eyes, looking comforted, not faking it, and her smile became a grin.

"You're loved, you know," she glanced down at her embroidered slippers for a moment, her smile strangely knowing. "Don't forget that, ever. Me and Ion would love to see you back here every now and then...and the baby, well-"

The child yawned, and Abel's eyes widened as they both peered down, catching a glimpse of tiny fang-points in the warm sun.

"He's a...but how?" Abel blinked, "I thought only-"

"Yes and yes," she glanced away, "Normally methuselah children are only birthed to mothers that are the same. But I'm afraid Ion's family carries an interesting sort of genetic mutation that sometimes seems to break the rules. Honestly, I didn't know about it until he was born. The Fortuna's haven't married into terran blood for hundreds of years. Mirka had to look it up...and Seth helped of course with the testing for it.  But I'm, I just-"  She hesitated, looking uncertain, now saddled with far more than the average terran mother would ever face.

But he was only half-listening.  The nanites running through his blood had responded to the sight of the tiny fangs as well, and a bit of his uneasiness melted away as he realized the partial source of all his tension. A certain feral part of himself that was more crusnik than man laughed at this, the humor of the situation not lost to the alien that resided beneath his blood and bone.

"I trust you though," Esther whispered, "even with the, well, you know-  If anything ever happens, um, do you think you could-"

They both stared at one another in silence for a long moment.

"But I'm a-" he managed, voice cracking.

"-The only man other than Ion I would ever trust with him," she finished, features set, blue eyes hard in a way that meant there would be no talking her out of it, ever.

He rolled his own set of eyes, and the crusnik was at last silent once more.

"You wouldn't hurt him...I know it. I've always known that about you, because this goes beyond blood, Father Nightroad. Love always does."

She caught his faint smile with one of her own, patting his arm lightly before she moved away and rose up, brushing off her gauzy summer dress.

"I need to go find Ion, um, I know I have servants for this, but, " she smiled in a devil-may-care manner that he found both faintly attractive and highly endearing. "Do you think you could stay here with him? I'll be back soon, I promise. He's really good though, but if he gives you any trouble, there should be a lady's maid right outside. Just peek out, um, well-"

He opened his mouth as if to say something. But she didn't give him a chance. Esther never did anymore. The muffled sound of her slippers on the new carpet echoed across the nursery and then she had slipped out the door without even a single glance back.

Silence once again stretched over the room.  Abel hesitated, mouth slightly agape, than looked down at the infant, as the child looked back up with a smile. Nervously, he rose up from the couch and started to pace around the room, wishing that Esther would walk back through the door, having forgotten something.  After a tense moment he pushed his glasses back up his nose, shoulders slumping.  She wasn't coming back.

"Well," his smile back, though gentle, was pained, "you're quite young yet...but I guess you'll grow eh? Quite the future you're going to have, huh?"

The little boy looked far from impressed, he squirmed in Abel's arms, and then made a half-hearted whimper.

"But, you're going to be the future king of Albion, right? Won't that be-"

He was stopped by the thought that the future king of the most advanced terran empire in the known world would one day be a vampire. And suddenly the meaning of Esther's words became all too clear.

"Guess I will have to stick around, hmmm?" he chuckled, shaking his head and glancing over at an oak rocking chair that took up one of the corners beside the crib. "If nothing else, things will very soon get quite interesting I think."

And so he sat in down in the old oak chair and rocked, until both drifted off, his head on his chest, the child curled against his stomach, in the warmth of the afternoon. And when Esther finally did return, hours later, to find them still like that, sleeping deeply, she saw neither crusnik nor methuselah. Only two hands, intertwined in the space between them, one small fist coiled over one lithe finger, and the delicate curl of one silver strand of hair, overlaying a field of delicate golden fuzz.